What goes in my "Publications" section?

February 11, 2011 3:02 PM

Journalist with academic aspirations has a CV question.

I'm applying for a journalism teaching job at a university. The Dean told me "send a CV and cover letter to ___." Great. Got to write a CV for the first time, rather than a resume. I have a couple years' college teaching experience and a ton of journalism experience. I've noticed that CVs are big on "publications."

What do former daily journalists put there? I probably have 5,000 bylines. How do I pick the ones that go on my CV? Or are these just for papers published in academic journals? Any advice?

posted by Buffaload to Work & Money (5 answers total)

A lot of academics put their CVs online. I would go look at journalism schools and see if you can find some on faculty webpages. Or google "cv journalism professor" and see what kinds of things you get.

For a normal academic, you would only include peer-reviewed scholarly publications.
Without having a background in journalism, my guess would be that you'd put your years working at whichever publications, and not put your articles in the publications section unless they are in peer-reviewed journals, or unless they are very substantial investigative pieces - eg maybe someone who writes New Yorker length pieces would put those, but maybe not the shorter articles you'd find in a daily newspaper? And that such a listing might be called "Selected Publications" rather than "Publications". Or if you've published anything in the scholarly press you could have tow sections - one for "Scholarly Publications" and one for "Articles" or similar. But that is just a guess.

Something else to realize about CVs is that they can be very long, much much longer than a normal resume would be, so don't worry about the length.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:14 PM on February 11, 2011

I'm finding fewer CVs online in j-schools than I was expecting, but maybe you will have better luck. At any rate, here are two examples:

CV of Clint Wilson (PDF) at Howard has section called "Major Scholarly Publications" with this explanation: "Published scores of articles, essays, newspaper columns and anecdotes for popular periodicals and newspapers. (The following lists only works germane to academia.)"

CV of Neil Henry (PDF) at Berkeley lists "Selected Publications" - scholarly pubs and recent non-academic articles, but ends the list with "Additional articles for The Washington Post, Newsweek Magazine, the Manchester Guardian and other publications, 1978-1995, available on LexisNexis.com, searchable by byline."
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:43 PM on February 11, 2011

LobsterMitten is on the money. It sounds like you've been hired to teach skills courses and not as a tenure-track researcher. The "publications" section as such doesn't really apply to you. Just list the newspapers or magazines you've worked for, what years you were there, and what your title was. It should look something like this:

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

City Editor, Townsville Daily, 2006-2011
Copy Editor, Cityville Weekly, 2003-2006
General Assignment Reporter, Village Weekly, 2000-2003

You don't need to list all your bylines, but make sure to mention if you've won any awards or been otherwise recognized for any stories you did.
posted by Rangeboy at 3:51 PM on February 11, 2011

"Something else to realize about CVs is that they can be very long, much much longer than a normal resume would be, so don't worry about the length."

This. There is a scientist at my institution whose CV is literally hundreds of pages long. Full CVs don't just include every publication ever but also every committee served on, every conference presented at, every professional organization membership, even lists of students or other faculty mentored. Pretty much everything you've ever done that relates to your professional life, however trivial -- sort of the opposite of the "distill the highlights into 2 pages" approach of the business world resume.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:36 AM on February 12, 2011

I'm a journalist and recently put together my cv. I listed my job titles and positions exactly as Rangeboy did, above, but also quantified my bylines. Such as: 12 published books reviews in one magazine. 320 published artist profiles in another, and so on. Not sure if that's standard but it seemed important (to me, anyway).
posted by Jason and Laszlo at 2:03 PM on February 12, 2011